Dillinger steel for offshore wind farms in the North and Baltic Seas

The Westermost Rough (North Sea) and EnBW Baltic 2 (Baltic Sea) wind parks constructed using more than 62,000 tons of heavy plate from Dillinger Hütte can now supply more than 490,000 households with environmentally friendly electricity – and thus cut CO2 emissions by one million tons.

With an annual yield of 1.2 billion kilowatt hours, the EnBW Baltic 2 offshore wind farm located 32 km north of the island of Rügen, Germany, which officially went online in autumn 2015, is capable on its own of supplying around 340,000 households. With 80 wind turbines and an area of 27 km², it is currently the largest wind farm in the Baltic Sea region. The height of the wind turbines is also impressive – at 138 meters high they are just one meter lower than the Pyramid of Cheops in Gizeh.

Because of varying water depths and challenging soil conditions, the wind turbines are anchored into the seabed in two different ways: up to a depth of 35 meters, a monopile foundation is used; at depths greater than 35 meters, steel framework structures called “jackets” are used. For the 80 foundation structures, Dillinger Hütte delivered around 37,700 tons of thermomechanically rolled heavy plate in thicknesses of 20 to 85 mm.

The Westermost Rough offshore wind farm is located 8 kilometers off the east coast of England (Yorkshire) and covers a total area of around 35 km². It consists of 35 wind turbines and is the first large commercial project to employ 6 megawatt turbines. With a length of 95 meters and a diameter of 154 meters, the rotor blades are also thought to be the longest in the world. For the monopile foundation structures at water depths of 20 meters, which have a diameter of 6.5 meters, a length of 60 meters and weigh up to 810 tons, Dillinger Hütte delivered 24,000 tons of thermomechanically rolled heavy plate in thicknesses of 40 to 107 mm.